FPGA implementation of a microcoded elliptic curve cryptographic processor

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) has been the focus of much recent attention since it offers the highest security per bit of any known public key cryptosystem. This benefit of smaller key sizes makes ECC particularly attractive for embedded applications since its implementation requires less memory and processing power. In this paper a microcoded Xilinx Virtex based elliptic curve processor is described. In contrast to previous implementations, it implements curve operations as well as optimal normal basis field operations in F(2/sup n/); the design is parameterized for arbitrary n; and it is microcoded to allow for rapid development of the control part of the processor. The design was successfully tested on a Xilinx Virtex XCV300-4 and, for n=113 bits, utilized 1290 slices at a maximum frequency of 45 MHz and achieved a thirty-fold speedup over an optimized software implementation.